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The Marble Collector by Cecelia Ahern

I will never be a huge fan of Cecelia Ahern although I liked her novel P.S. I love you a lot. But this new book simply wasn't for me.

The Marble CollectorAuthorCecelia AhernPublisherHarper Collins on November 5, 2015GenreNovelPages304FormatHardcoverSourcePublisherGoodreads

When Sabrina Boggs stumbles upon a mysterious collection of her father´s possessions, she discovers a truth were she never knew there was a lie. The familiar man she grew up with is suddenly a stranger to her. An unexpected break in her monotonous daily routine leaves her just one day to unlock the secrets of the man she thought she knew. A day that unearths memories, stories and people she never knew existed. A day that changes her and those around her forever.

Thoughts

I don´t know for sure what it was, that kept me from getting really haunted by this novel. The lack of drive, the many things that I wasn´t really interested in or something else.

Don´t get me wrong. I am well aware of her style since I read her first novel and with that book, I fell in love right away. But since then I have read many other books out of that genre as well and I guess I am kind of grown out of her way of writing. Not that her style is bad, it isn´t. It is just not for me anymore.
At least when it comes to her regular novels; how she writes in the YA Dystopian genre I am not familiar with, yet, so I can´t say anything to that.
For this book, I gave three stars because the characters saved this book from downfall.

Story

Sabrina´s father Fergus suffers a stroke and loses some of his memories. He now lives in a nursing home and she visits him as often as she can. As a mother of three sons, she has plenty to do, her job is boring and her marriage isn´t as happy anymore as she used to be. Although Sabrina would say that everything is fine. But her husband is differently minded. So they both go into action and from now on everything she says she wants to do, he lets her do it.
So when a few boxes arrive at her father´s nursing home and she gets called, she decides to take them to her place and to look inside. And discovers a stunning Marble collection, she didn´t know that existed. But when she sees, that some of them are missing, she starts to search for them and unravels a side of her father, she never knew.

Style

Cecelia Ahern writes very softly. The Marble Collector is on many pages very melancholic and you´ll read there a lot of things you´re not really interested in. I know that the author can do a lot better than that, ´cause I´ve read her first novel P.S. I love you – and that was a beautifully written novel. But this novel is average. It starts boring and needs a long time, almost to the end of the book, to become fascinating for the reader.

You´ll get the story through two lines of action. One is told by Sabrina from her point of view, the other gets told by Fergus, her father, and his point of view. But that doesn´t save the story from being boring at the start. It takes some chapters before that changes.
I don´t know why the author decided to create some pale, weird and kind of awkward figures. She can do a lot better than that and it sounds strange when I say that, but for the plot that was exactly the right thing to do.

Characters

Cecelia Ahern does with her characters that, what the plot can´t achieve: she bounds the reader to the book. You read it all to the end only for them. Only to see why Fergus did what he did.

Fergus Boggs is a nice guy, likable and his passion for marbles is wonderful. He shows you how he grew up, what his eldest brother Hamish meant for him and it is the way Hamish used the people around him – even his little brothers – that made Fergus the way he became. His relationship with his eldest brother goes like a red fiber through his life.

Okay, there is his daughter too. She is a bit pale, keeps everything to herself, and ignores the fact, that her husband isn´t too happy about that. She takes care of her three sons, goes to work and lives a life that isn´t worth called one. But when she gets to learn that her father had a secret passion, she starts to live again. She steps out of her daily routine, starts to question things, and becomes a real pain in the ass for her mother. Sabrina´s change through the story is remarkable and nice to watch.

Conclusion

For some reasons, I couldn´t really warm up with this novel. I read it all through the end, because I got it for free from the publisher in exchange for an honest review, so I read it. But I wouldn´t have bought it in the first place because I don´t like the optic of the cover (the German edition is not really my thing) and the story itself didn´t seem to be very promising either. Now I have to say that only the characters made it worth reading, that they could make up for the shortfall of the plot. And only because of them, it gets 3 stars.

Happy reading

Cecelia Ahern was born and grew up in Dublin. She is now published in nearly fifty countries, and has sold over twenty-four million copies of her novels worldwide. Two of her books have been adapted as films and she has created several TV series. She and her books have won numerous awards, including the Irish Book Award for Popular Fiction for The Year I Met You. She lives in Dublin with her family.

Happy reading

I am Vi, avid reader, book blogger and painter who loves to talk and write about books. A day without one in my hands is a wasted one. Skilled florist with a degree in writing - oh yes, that works. I like many genres, but horror is nothing for me! Have fun.

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